“A north Florida judge has issued a restraining order against Rep. Cory Mills after the central Florida Republican was accused by a former girlfriend of threatening to circulate sexually explicit videos of her,” Politico reports.

Brian Beutler: “Donald Trump and Stephen Miller will probably get the blood in the streets they want eventually.”

“We don’t know when or how it will unfold, or how the public will come to perceive it. But we do know that no matter how it unfolds or is perceived, it is already their fault, and everyone who cares about the future of the country should be prepared to blame them.”

“A man who scaled an iron security fence in the middle of the night, eluded police and used beer bottles filled with gasoline to ignite the occupied Pennsylvania governor’s mansion pleaded guilty Tuesday to attempted murder and other charges,” the AP reports.

Under a plea deal, the man was sentenced to 25 to 50 years in prison.

Axios reports that 337 mass shootings have occurred so far this year in the U.S. as of Oct. 11, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

Any incident involving more than four people being shot, not including the shooter, is considered a mass shooting.

“The acting U.S. Attorney in Maryland is moving forward quickly to seek criminal charges against President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton,” MSNBC reports.

Molly Roberts: “It’s hard to imagine a worse case than the one against James Comey—until you see the one against the attorney general of New York.”

“The FBI has fired at least three special agents who worked in connection with former special counsel Jack Smith’s probe of now-President Donald Trump,” NBC News reports.

Former FBI director James Comey pleaded not guilty at his arraignment Wednesday morning in federal court in Alexandria, VA, the New York Times reports.

Comey’s lawyer entered the plea on behalf of his client and requested a trial by jury. The judge set a trial date of January 5.

Playbook: “At 10 a.m. this morning, former FBI Director James Comey will appear in a Virginia courthouse to face federal charges. The hearing will be brief. Comey will be formally charged with lying to Congress and with obstruction of justice, and he will plead not guilty. A trial date may be set. The whole thing should be over in a few minutes.”

“But this is a momentous day for America — and not just because Comey is the first former FBI chief to be arraigned since Richard Nixon’s fall guy L. Patrick Gray in 1978. (The charges against Gray were later dropped.) Today’s proceedings matter because after years of threats, Trump is following through on something he has long vowed to do: criminally prosecute his political foes. It’s a moment many believed would never come.”

“A top prosecutor in Virginia has informed colleagues she plans to decline to seek charges against New York Attorney General Letitia James, resisting intense pressure from President Donald Trump,” MSNBC reports.

“Elizabeth Yusi, who oversees major criminal prosecutions in the Norfolk office of the Eastern District of Virginia, has confided to co-workers that she sees no probable cause to believe James engaged in mortgage fraud.”

“Democrats are pushing their candidates to go on the offense on crime ahead of the 2026 midterms, seeing upside in what’s been one of their weakest electoral issues,” Politico reports.

“A private polling memo that shows potential openings for the party to peel voters away from Republicans on one of their core issues is being distributed to House Democrats and their campaign committees.”

“The battleground-district survey from Global Strategy Group offers a bleak assessment of Democrats’ starting point: 89 percent of the 1,200 likely voters surveyed want their Congress member to take steps to keep them safe, but only 38 percent trust Democrats over Republicans with that task.”

Robert Morris, the Texas megachurch pastor who built Gateway Church into one of the largest congregations in the country, pleaded guilty to charges that he sexually abused a girl in the 1980s, NBC News reports.

Former South Carolina state Rep. R.J. May III (R) will plead guilty to distributing child sex material, the Columbia State reports.

May, the married father of two young children, has agreed to plead guilty to five counts of distributing child pornography on the internet and faces 20 years in prison.

“The FBI has fired agents who were photographed kneeling during a racial justice protest in Washington that followed the 2020 death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers,” the AP reports.

New York Times: “Getting an indictment is relatively easy for prosecutors, who have a lot of sway over grand juries. Winning at trial is much harder, and in the Comey case, many factors could make it challenging for the government to secure a conviction.”

“Line prosecutors in Virginia who had initially reviewed the evidence in the Comey case put in a memo why they thought the effort to convict him was too weak to take to court. The grand jury on Thursday rejected one of the three counts presented to it. And Mr. Trump’s string of invective about Mr. Comey and his repeated references to his own criminal cases provide a lot of evidence for possible defense motions about a vindictive prosecution.”

“Still, Mr. Trump has always understood that even absent a conviction, defendants face a reputational cost in a criminal case, not to mention the financial penalty in the form of legal bills.”

“Congress is on track to spend more than $1 billion on the budget for the U.S. Capitol Police for the first time in history, with even fiscal conservatives pushing for more member security investments in the wake of the Charlie Kirk killing,” Politico reports.

“Kirk’s assassination and a broader rise in high-profile political violence has activated lawmakers around a renewed push for additional protections for themselves and their families. It’s scrambling Capitol Hill’s typical ideological factions, with some GOP budget hawks accusing Republican leadership of penny-pinching.”

Former Rep. George Santos (R-NY) wrote a letter to the South Shore Press asking President Trump to “intervene” and “help me escape” from prison.